[Resolved] wp_query orderby not working in custom loop

I’m building a theme for a WPMU 2.7.1 hosted blog. The client wants an archive of all posts on every single post page, which is why I’m using wp_query to create a second loop. My problem is that the ‘orderby’ parameter seems not to work propery.

I use an $order var that can be either ‘date’, ‘author’, ‘rand’ or ‘title’. (This code also includes a fix I found that restores the old query that may not be needed here.)